Fall From Grace

This story appears in the April 27, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated.

Excerpted from AMERICAN ICON: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime, by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe and Christian Red. Copyright © by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe and Christian Red. To be published May 12, 2009, by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

In their reporting for American Icon, the book from which this article was adapted, the New York Daily News investigative team of Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe and Christian Red reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, congressional depositions, police reports, medical files and transcripts of secretly recorded phone calls. They interviewed MLB players and executives, players' association officials, U.S. congressional leaders, law enforcement agents, attorneys, steroid suppliers, trainers, doctors and doping experts. Their repeated requests to speak to Roger Clemens were refused. The team's original reporting for the Daily News won the Associated Press Sports Editors award for Best Investigative Reporting in 2008.

Even to a former New York City cop, the question was jarring. "Can you help me?" Roger Clemens asked. "I can't inject in my booty."

This is how Brian McNamee, then the Toronto Blue Jays' new strength and conditioning coordinator, remembers it all starting. He glanced up at Clemens, whose broad frame blocked most of McNamee's view of the rest of the SkyDome clubhouse. A few other players milled about the room, preparing for the upcoming series against the Baltimore Orioles. Toronto designated hitter and occasional outfielder Jose Canseco was picking through his stall nearby, his back to Clemens and McNamee.

The trainer, who had come to baseball from the NYPD, was slumped in his own stall. Why, he wondered, was arguably the greatest pitcher of his era asking for help in sticking a hypodermic needle in his ass?

Clemens handed McNamee a small, white, opaque container resembling an aspirin bottle without a label. "What do you think of these?" Clemens asked. McNamee took the container and poured some white pills into his hand. They looked like oral testosterone, a substance he had only recently researched. "That looks like Anadrol-50," said Canseco, suddenly barging into the conversation. Before McNamee or Clemens could object, the burly Canseco took a couple of the pills and shoved them into his mouth.

McNamee wheeled around to face Clemens. "Don't take that," he told the pitcher. "That's really bad for you." Clemens then gave McNamee a bag filled with 50 to 100 glassine bottles and told him to get rid of them. McNamee later suspected that the bottles contained cypionate or enanthate: straight testosterone.

At 35, Clemens was Toronto's staff ace and highest-paid player, pulling in a cool $8.55 million. Two-and-a-half months into the 1998 season, however, his record was a pedestrian 6-6. He was less than a year removed from going 21-7 and winning his fourth Cy Young Award, but something was off, and his club was suffering as a result. Toronto was fading fast in the American League East standings.

During spring training McNamee had taken stock of Clemens's flabby physique. He didn't think the pitcher would continue to be successful without a change in his conditioning routine, even though Clemens maintained that his workout regimen was unequaled in professional sports. Now the Rocket wanted someone to help him with needle injections?